Climate change ‘supercharging hurricane season’

With hurricanes, floods, drought and sea level rise happening across the world, the perils of climate change are staring humanity in the face like never before. The brutal wind and torrential rainfall of Hurricane Milton that killed 17 people in Florida last week were worsened by human-caused climate change, a team of international scientists said.
Global warming made wind speeds around 10% stronger and rainfall greater by between 20% and 30%, according to an analysis by World Weather Attribution. The group of climate scientists studies the role of climate change in fuelling extreme weather. Milton intensified from a Category 1 storm into a tempestuous Category 5 in less than 24 hours, feeding off record- and near-record-warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico. It made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 hurricane.
Previous scientific analyses have shown climate change has made such temperatures in the Gulf between 400 and 800 times more likely. This extra heat made Milton the third-fastest intensifying Atlantic hurricane on record, the US National Hurricane Center said, with maximum sustained wind speeds reaching 290kph. The scientist group noted that rainfall storms similar to Milton are now about twice as likely as they would be without human-induced warming.
“This study has confirmed what should already be abundantly clear: climate change is supercharging storms, and burning fossil fuels is to blame,” said Ian Duff, a campaigner at environmental nonprofit Greenpeace. “Millions of people across Florida – many of whom lack insurance – now face astronomical costs to rebuild shattered homes and communities.”
Scientists have previously identified a concerning trend of rapid hurricane intensification in the Atlantic over the past 50 years, which they said may be tied to climate change. In light of extremely warm surface-water temperatures around Florida and the Caribbean, forecasters had expected a supercharged Atlantic hurricane season, with between four and seven major storms.
Milton is the second Category 5 hurricane this season, which runs from June through November. There have only been five other years since 1950 that registered more than one Category 5 hurricane in one season, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has long warned of rising sea levels linked to global warming, with populations living along Africa’s coastlines particularly at risk. The UN body says climate change will mean more frequent and severe flooding, increased coastal erosion and extreme weather events, which could occur every year instead of once a century in the past.
For example, Senegal loses 0.5 to 2m of coastline every year. In Bargny, on Senegal’s western Atlantic coast, which is home to some 70,000 people, residents say the coastline has receded by around 60m since the early 1980s, with the problem worsening in recent years.
Some 893,000 people have been affected by flooding in South Sudan and more than 241,000 displaced, the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said Thursday in a grim update on the disaster. Aid agencies have warned that the world’s youngest country, highly vulnerable to climate change, is facing its worst flooding in decades.
On another front, harsh weather is reducing wheat production in major exporting countries, cutting inventories that have already been projected to hit nine-year lows while fuelling a sudden surge in prices. On top of everything, a major academic study has dampened the hopes of scientists that even if global temperatures temporarily exceed climate targets, the planet could eventually cool back down.
The report highlights the dangers of “climate overshoot”– a temporary breach of the 1.5C warming limit set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, an increasingly difficult goal to achieve. Even a brief overshoot could lead to long-term impacts, including rising sea levels and other lasting effects that may persist for thousands of years.